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May 4, 2010

Send in The Lawyers

Farrell Keough

According to Reuters, “Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday he was dispatching a team of lawyers to New Orleans to monitor the oil spill and that the Obama Administration would vigorously enforce environmental laws.”

This action was taken eight days after the initial explosion of the BP deep water platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Some will remember the outrage over President George W. Bush waiting one day to return to Washington after Hurricane Katrina hit. Yet, little to no outrage was heard about President Barack Obama remaining virtually silent for eight days about an event which has the potential to damage many lives and wildlife.

Not only is this a bald-faced double standard in the treatment of our presidents, but the consequences of this kind, lenient treatment opens the doors to yet more shenanigans.

Talk show host Mark Levin has been tracking this situation for some time and the media is finally waking up to question this delay. Mr. Levin notes some very odd pronouncements by President Obama about this situation. During one of the president’s press conferences, he noted that the Department of the Interior will be sending in SWAT teams.

Mr. Levin, who worked for President Ronald Reagan, noted that while he was in the Department of Interior, he was unaware of any SWAT teams. He said: “What are these SWAT teams going to do… we have an environmental problem, we have a leak, and we’re sending SWAT teams to the platforms and the rigs – SWAT teams are not environmentalist experts, they’re not scientists, they’re not engineers, they’re law enforcement – so why are we sending SWAT teams to all the platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico?”

People will remember how President Obama’s chief of staff, Rham Emanuel told a press corps “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” It is precisely this kind of attitude and perspective toward leadership and control that makes this situation so worrisome.

As described by Mr. Levin, the reasoning for sending out a SWAT team would not be to help with mitigation or clean up activities. The only thing such a SWAT team could accomplish would be reconnaissance – obtaining necessary information for either more lawsuits or as an attempt to ‘take over’ yet another area of our economy. Having Attorney General Holder send in the lawyers adds credence to this argument.

There was a time when this kind of perspective would have been thought the farfetched rantings of an ideologue. Recently, Representative Michele Bachmann noted that in the last 18 months, the Obama Administration has ‘taken either direct ownership or control of 51 percent of the private economy.’ While some will argue this statistic away by either comparing it to past history, (World War II is a common tactic) or diminishing the actual influence this administration actually wields, the facts speak for themselves. From bailouts to healthcare to Environmental Protection Agency declarations, this administration has either directly or indirectly wielded control over much of our economy – at levels not previously attempted.

When we speak of government overstepping its authority, it is precisely these situations which display this kind of attack on our freedoms and disdain our current system of capitalism. This administration did not react quickly to send out scientists or engineers, but rather their mechanism of choice was to send out the lawyers well after the fact. This is a telling fact of action, not simply eloquent words.

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